


Hands on Hips

by Missy



Category: What It Feels Like for a Girl - Madonna (Music Video)
Genre: Adventure, Backstory, Bittersweet, Character Study, Escapism, Family Feels, Fast Cars, Gen, Grandmothers, POV Alternating, Running Away, racecar driving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 12:24:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10944459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Her name is Sally today.A solid name, strong and traditional, common.





	Hands on Hips

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Supertights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supertights/gifts).



> I wanted to be super careful to respect all of your wishes - so I avoided any real angst, self-harm or explicitly portrayed violence. To keep the final product true to canon, the end result was more bittersweet than anything - I think that's a natural progression of the video's story anyway! I hope it's what you were hoping for!

Her name is Sally today.

A solid name, strong and traditional, common. Nobody goes looking around for a Sally to cause trouble. Nobody acts like a Sally will lift a couple of thousand in watches and fine diamonds, then smile as she slides out the back door. Sallys don’t commit vehicular manslaughter and they don’t steal cars. They marry the boy next door and win first place at baking contests.

She goes nextdoor and buys a milkshake in celebration when she wins the contract. Icy sweet and creamy, it rolls down her throat as she slips away, chaos at her heels but a smile on her lips.

The next heist and the next bit of glory will be entirely up to what fate throws in her way.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

Doris drove stock cars when she was younger. She was one of the first women behind the wheel at the Petaluma Speedway, the first one to ever put her hands upon the wheel and spin, spin, spin as the wheels whirled around, hypnotizing her watchers. She lived to dare them to follow her, and dreamed of making a bigger splash.

But it was the fifties, and back then she was a novelty act. They expected her to get married, to raise a family, instead of grace magazine covers.

So Doris married her head mechanic, and found herself sitting in the bleachers when her husband won yet another grand prix. Four children, eight grandchildren, and one great grandchild later she had a whole garden of children to smile on as they drifted in and out of her life, tipping the help for being kind to her, smiling indulgently as she moved through another season. Now it wasn’t an unhappy life – not by a long shot. She loved her family and her husband but well – she did miss the sensation of an engine revving to life under her open palm. Nothing quite matched the feeling of a victory lap, and nothing else could replace the memory of her on-track victories.

Content though she had been with babies and hearth – a shrinking hearth, now that the kids had moved and had kids of their own - Doris never forgot the beauty of speed, never stopped being in love with the feeling of it.

Maybe that was why she was so obsessed with the network’s coverage of high speed chases. She remembered what it was like to feel a throttle jerk against her cupping palm and to know the feeling of a gas pedal beneath her feet. Remembered fondly, and wished it back.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

Sally is elegant, efficient, and deadly. That is what put her at the top of her class, what keeps her motivated as she moves between towns, with no more than a suitcase and a squirt gun in her pocket. 

Sally is sweet and menacing. She once robbed a man in Reno to watch him cry, then bought him a lollipop to cut the sting. She’s many things, but vicious is not one of them. At least, not if you’re not standing in her way.

But there are parts of Sally that no person will ever reach. There are parts of her that are as remote as a mountain range, unknowing. 

 

*** 

When Sally was born Doris was forty-five. She remembered holding her, that little dark haired mite with enormous eyes, and wondering where she would go, what she would do. 

She’d prayed for her when she’d gotten into drifting. She’d wished on stars when she disappeared after joining the military. She crossed her fingers whenever she’d resurface, as a blonde, as a brunette, as a magazine executive or a matador, as a dominatrix or an actress in a community playhouse. 

When Doris’ memory began to go, Sally was the one who made sure she’d be taken care of. Sally was also the one who visited the most, a lithe whipcord of a woman with enormous eyes, holding her teacup tightly, as if it were some sort of deadly weapon that she required; as if, if she let go of the thing, there would be a total catastrophe beyond even her own comprehension.

 

 

****

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She doesn’t make an actual decision. Not until she’s in her hotel room, with her pills and her potions and her bruised ribs. With the suitcase she was scheduled to hand off to a very tall German with a serious haircut and thirty thousand dollars in Columbian cocaine for her to trade in for the twenty thousand in silver her handler had left her with in the Cheboygan airport. 

Silver for gold, Sally thinks, and tapes her wrists. Silver for gold.

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

Doris wasn’t fully conscious of the choice when it was made. Maybe it was a choice that had been made years ago, when she sat in the cab of her first car and grinned out the window, her pulse high and hard in her throat. 

Doris remembered the feeling, if not the words. 

Sally took the cup from her hands and smiled sweetly. 

“Grandma? Would you like to go for a drive?”

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

Sally looks at the old woman, as she sits silently in her chair, hands pressed close to her lap, unmoving. 

Her grandmother once had the biggest eyes – they were sparkling, intelligent, and filled with amusement. She’d always had the best advice for Sally when she was younger. Now it was Sally who would look out for her. Now, captured and pressed behind frames, they look as shrunken as the rest of her.

What kind of life had she left her Grandmother to live? She was well-taken care of, true – but isolated, lonely, boxed in.

Well, that was going to change.

“Grandma? Would you like to go for a drive?”

 

 

****

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------**

 

 

Doris wanted to comment about the overpriced car this grandchild of hers had bought. It looked like an expensive. She wondered who was paying for it.’

Fondly, Sally buckled her in, and Doris tried to smile. Thank god she was getting away for the day. Even an hour’s time out would make a world of difference.

They were off on and adventure, and Doris couldn’t keep her pulse from leaping at the thought.

There were many places finer than this one. There were many houses with high roofs and beautiful chimneys, all of them high and sweetened by moonlight. She wanted nothing more than to find them.

And with her granddaughter’s help, she knew they’d reach those heights together.

**Author's Note:**

> "Sally" is the name on the fake ID Madonna's character selects before picking up the elderly woman at her rest home.
> 
> The text of the video generally suggests that Madonna's character isn't actually related to the elderly woman she picks up, but I suppose there could be a between-the-lines reading suggesting they're blood relations, this is what I went with!
> 
> Spot the stray Madonna music video references as you go!


End file.
